Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle venture-capital firm stacked with veterans of local companies such as Amazon.com and RealNetworks, is adding a former Microsoft Corp. executive to its ranks.

Ted Kummert, a 23-year veteran of Microsoft, is joining Madrona as a venture partner. Mr. Kummert’s last job at Microsoft was as a corporate vice president in the division that sells server software and back-end computing services such as the Azure “cloud” offering.

Madrona said the 49-year-old Mr. Kummert will focus on new and existing investments in software companies aimed at businesses, a territory that has been particularly hot in the last year. The rise of so-called enterprise startups is “an incredible opportunity for customers and it’s an incredible opportunity for companies,” Mr. Kummert said.

Madrona generally invests in startups based in the Pacific Northwest, and it is probably best known for its early investment in Amazon.com, and its investment in Isilon Systems, a data storage company that EMC bought in 2010 for roughly $2.3 billion.

(Madrona is named after an orange-barked tree prevalent in the Pacific Northwest.) The firm’s current investments include Cheezburger Inc., a collection of humor websites, and Apptio, which helps companies track their information-technology costs.

Madrona last year closed on its fifth fund with $300 million in committed capital.

With his appointment, Mr. Kummert is staying close to his roots. He was raised in Seattle, attended the University of Washington and worked at Microsoft – based in the Seattle suburbs — for the biggest chunk of his professional life.

Mr. Kummert also has other former Microsoft officials to keep him company. Brian McAndrews, who worked at Microsoft after he sold his digital-advertising company, aQuantive, to the company in 2007, also is a venture partner there. Tim Porter, a Madrona managing director, previously worked in Microsoft’s mergers-and-acquisitions group.